Dannielle Tegeder

It’s tricky to talk about the installation of Dannielle Tegeder’s exhibition, because it changes every week. Artist Peter Halley and critic Barry Schwabsky have both done rehangings of the show, and surprises continue through the final weekend. Unaltered, however, are the show’s basic elements: linear abstractions on paper, canvas, and wall, plus Brancusi-inspired sculptural pieces that sometimes prop up the framed works (which may lean againstbut never hang on the walls). This approach comports nicely with the theme that has occupied Tegeder since she earned her MFA at the School of the Institute of Chicago in 1997. Raised upstate in a family of steamfitters, the artist uses old-style architectural drawing tools (protractors, rulers, T-squares, etc.) to create diagrammatic images that express, with a neo-Constructivist flair, the timeless dialogue between constancy and flux, fixed systems and human quirkiness. Adding to this serious play are the works’ ludicrously long and detailed titles, a deadpan evocation of the absurd. —Richard Vine

Pictured: Dannielle Tegeder: Lahm (high-density solids pump): Improvements such as passively safe usually converted into a stable and compact form which is then enriched using various techniques rods of the proper composition and geometry for the particular reactor…., 2016, gouache, ink, colored pencil, graphite, water-based spray paint, and pastel on Fabriano Murillo paper, 83 by 59 inches. Courtesy Johannes Vogt, New York.